


You Shot the Arrow (At You)

by winter_rogue



Series: Bury Me Upside Down [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Dubious Consent, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-11
Updated: 2014-01-24
Packaged: 2017-12-14 16:19:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 12,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/838882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winter_rogue/pseuds/winter_rogue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It would be the kindest thing to say: No one can make you feel something you don’t already feel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sequel to my story "We Wouldn't Fail Anything Else" I would suggest reading that first.
> 
> Both of these stories take place in an nebulus post-season 1ish place where Erica, Isaac and Boyd were still bitten but none of the gerard/kanima stuff happened. I haven't watched anything for the new season so there shouldn't be any s3 spoilers.
> 
> Tags and Rating subject to change.
> 
> See the end notes for further warnings.

It would be the kindest thing to say, _No one can make you feel something you don’t already feel_. A reassurance that no matter the sort of meddling which may befall you— whether alien pollen, or a norse god, or even a Faerie Queen— it could only take root in something already there.

That, would be the kindest thing to say.

It would also be a lie.

 #

Snow fell the last day in January, and kept falling, until the whole town slumbered under a soft, white blanket. Slept, like he couldn’t.

Stiles stared up into the darkness, at the blank white ceiling above his head, and counted his breaths. 

In, _one two three,_ and exhale. 

Repeat.

Keep breathing.

If he concentrated, it was almost enough to distract him. If he kept counting, eventually his body would succumb to sleep. Or that was the theory. Four days and he’d only been marginally successful but— well, he had to keep trying didn’t he? Because the world kept turning with him in it. And if he was counting his breaths, at least it meant he wasn’t crouched in the bathroom puking out his guts.

He shivered once, violently, from the cold air that seeped in through the single pane glass. His window stayed carefully closed but it wasn’t really designed for the freak cold snap.

Stiles lay on his bare mattress and kept breathing. It was all he could do.

 #

“Stiles! It’s five after, you better be awake in there.” A beat. Then his dad’s voice again through his door, a little gentler, closer. “Scott’s waiting for you downstairs.”

“I’m—” he coughed to clear the waver out of his throat and threw his bedroom door open. Pasted on a wry smile for the sake of the Sheriff and stepped into the hall. “I’m awake. Obviously. Scott you said? Better get going then. I’ll see you later, dad.”

Stiles kept his expression carefully bland to meet Scott and harried both of them out of the house before his best friend could start in on the questions.

“Dude.”

“What?”

“You look awful.”

“Thanks Scott.”

“Sorry.” And he did look sorry, taking away the keys to the Jeep and herding Stiles into the passenger seat despite his protests.

“I’m not an invalid.”

“I know.”

“I can drive my own car.”

“I know. You just look—”

“Well I’m not. Jesus.”

“Please,” the werewolf looked at him with such large, sad eyes Stiles couldn’t do much but huff in a moment of irritation and strap himself in.

“I just worry,” Scott went on, starting the engine. He maneuvered them carefully out onto the street. Ice and snow crunched under the Jeep’s studded tired and they still fishtailed a little at the stop sign at the end of the street.

“What’s there to worry about?”

Scott looked at him. Their exhalations misted large clouds in the freezing cab.

“Eyes on the road!” 

Scott turned back.

“You can’t blame yourself. No one else does. There’s no way—”

“Pay attention to the road, Scott.”

“I am!” but even as he said it, downshifting, they started to skid sideways across the thankfully empty street. Stiles grabbed the dash in a white-knuckled grip and grit his teeth. He sent up a silent prayer for werewolf reflexes as Scott eased them back into a controlled glide.

“Should have put on the chains.”

“Maybe,” Scott allowed. They started moving forward again. A cloud opened up and thick, white flakes came spiraling out of the sky. “Maybe we’ll get there and they’ll have cancelled school.” 

Stiles tried on a grin for his friend’s sake and looked out the passenger side window. Already, two foot drifts had built up on either side of the street and in between the ruts where car tires passed. He’d never seen so much snow in his life. Never felt such pervasive cold. Stiles balled his hands up under his arm pits and watched his breath ghost across the glass, and freeze.

It might have been beautiful. But he couldn’t tell.

 

Beacon Hills High hadn’t cancelled by the time they got there, but even the busses rolled in almost an hour late. No one really prepared for so much snow so quickly.

Allison met them outside with a cautious expression. Scott grabbed her gloved hand and together they trudged across the half empty parking lot.

“Good morning.”

Stiles grunted. His feet felt frozen already, snow slush soaking through his converse. He buried his hands in his jean pockets and tried not to shiver too much. It wasn’t working. Nothing about this was casual, or fooling any of them. 

“Morning, Allison,” he said.

She paused at the doors to the school and looked back.

“I can’t believe they didn’t call out a snow day.”

The boys just shrugged.

Allison held out her hand, mitten covered palm up, and watched the flakes catch on the raw wool threads. Stiles watched silently as she brought the glove up and licked the pile of snow off with a flash of pink tongue and fogged air. Her cheeks flushed with the cold, eyes bright.

 

The school sent everyone home at noon anyways. When the snow showed no signs of letting up, piling up on the roads until the county had to break out the lone snow plow.

Stiles dropped Scott off first and then drove home at crawl. The last thing he needed to do was spin out, drive into a ditch, hit a tree.

Well, not the last thing; not the last thing at all, not even close.

The snow in the driveway scraped the Jeep’s undercarriage as he parked. Stiles threw the parking brake on and slide out of the driver’s side. His feet disappeared into the white.

 

And then next morning they cancelled school altogether. If the weatherman was to be believed, and who knew, maybe he was— it looked like they might be in for the long haul. Already the winds had picked up, hitting thirty miles an hour over night and continuing off and on into the morning. A low, cold pressure front came from the east.

Stiles lay on his bed and couldn’t bring himself to look at his bedroom window. 

Not now.


	2. Chapter 2

A branch snapped behind him, sounding like a gunshot in the still air. There were no other sounds, not birds or even breathing, a shocked, cowardly kind of silence. But for the _crack_ that startled him.

Then the soft shuffle of a footstep falling closer. It hesitates, falters and retreats. He’s glad for that. Guilty with the weight of relief.

He doesn’t want to turn around. Can’t. His stomach’s sunk straight into his feet like a lead weight, an anchor at least to hold him in place. In a second it will drag him down into the leaf loam. Maybe it would be for the best.

There’s the echo of cruel laughter still ringing in ears. Clarity like a bell and bang. He might never hear anything real again but can never forget the sound of—

 

“Stiles?” someone pounding on his door and calling through the door.

Stiles jerked upright, his heart thudding painfully in his chest and sweat beaded along his hairline. His bedroom was all cool watery light through the drapes.

“Stiles, I’m off to the station. I know they cancelled school but that doesn’t mean you should spend all day in bed. Okay, kiddo?”

“Al—” he coughed, dry lips stuck together, tried again, “Yeah, okay dad. I’ll see you later.”

He listened to the sheriff hesitate outside his door another minute, the way he sighed softly, before heavy booted footsteps retreated down the stairs.

Stiles lay there for a long time, first while he waited for his heart beat to return to normal and then another hour after that. Time seemed to slip away while he stared at the four blank, white walls around him. Nothing to see, nothing to hear except the wind picking up outside his window and scrape of a tree branch against the side of the house.

It was Thursday, and the weather still looked far from letting up.

He had homework to do. The school may have shut down temporarily— first in deference to driving conditions around town and later thanks to a dozen burst pipes and flooding— but they’d still sent out a packet of make-up work to everyone. His copy of _The Grapes of Wrath_ sat abandoned in the middle of this floor, spine cracked in the middle.

His window slid open with a _bang_ and Scott tumbled through, half covered in snow. Stiles shivered and watched him shake powder out of his hair.

“Thanks, right on the carpet.”

Scott winced and shoved the window back closed.

“Sorry. Seemed easier than clearing your front porch. Ever heard of a shovel?”

“What are you doing here?”

“I thought we could hang out. I brought hot cocoa,” Scott said. He unzipped his coat and pulled out a crumpled box of Swiss Miss. “And Batman,” he produced the DVD and a hopeful expression like a magician.

Stiles stood slowly, his joints cracking from sitting still for too long, and pulled a long sleeve shirt on over the tee he’d slept in. Gestured for Scott to follow him downstairs. His friend glanced once at the bare bed, not a stitch of bedding in sight, but didn’t say anything. And really, that was the best Stiles could ask for at this point.

Later, as explosion start going off in Gotham, Scott says,

“We’re supposed to check in tomorrow.”

Stiles grunts noncommittally.

“Lydia told Allison there was something weird about all this snow.”

“So what, we’re supposed to talk about the weather?”

Scott shifts around anxiously on his end of the couch. It’s obvious he wants to say something, claw his way through the dark cloud hovering around Stiles’ head all of a sudden, maybe.

“Well it is weird,” he says. Soft and apologetic.

“Yeah. I guess, if it turns out to be an abominable snowman, you’ll take a picture for me?”

“Stiles.”

“Shh, you’re talking through the best part.”

 

The snow storm isn’t due to an abominable snowman. Exactly. Scott tells him they aren’t sure what’s causing it. Then he says again,

“No one blames you.”

And that’s when the power goes out, mercifully severing their internet connection.

 #

Stiles heats up soup over a camp stove in the kitchen and melts cheese on bread for him and his dad. He imagines what the news reports would say if there was anyone left with a working television out there to watch them.

_“The rest of Northern California lost contact with Beacon Hills County today as weather conditions worsen. The possibility of a supernatural connection is still unknown.”_

The sheriff comes down, shivering and damp from a cold shower and eats with Stiles at the dinner table. He looks tired, shadows under his eyes.

Stiles wants to ask him if there’s any news. Any signs from the weather guys that the ends in sight. Or a report from the power company, _just kidding! Only a tree falling across the line. Everything will be back to normal in a jiffy!_ He wonders if people actually still use the word “jiffy” or if they ever did.

“You want some help putting chains on the Jeep?”

“No, I made Scott help me yesterday.”

“Good, that’s good. Just in case you need to go somewhere. If there’s an emergency.”

“Yeah, I know.”

His father stands, puts his dishes in the sink and hovers for a minutes over his shoulder. Drops a warm hand on his shoulder and squeezes.

“I’ll be back in a couple hours. Need to talk to Bill Taverns about clearing the main road overnight.”

“‘kay.”

“We good on soup?”

“We’re good.”

He drags his spoon through the minestrone until it’s cold and starting to congeal a little in the bowl.

All of the kitchen windows rattle in their wood frames and a howl streaks across the night. Stiles jerks towards the sound, all the hair on his arms standing on end. But it doesn’t repeat and he thinks, it had to be the wind.

He knows, way out on the edge of town, where civilization gives way to woods, all the little wolves are safe asleep in their warm beds.

All he can hear is the wind.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Like I said, this story exists in an imaginary place, where I wish s2 had gone. In this Lydia and Jackson are both werewolves, there was no Kanima, and Gerard does show up but on my terms.
> 
> And just in case it isn't very clear, this section back tracks to the summer pre-We Wouldn't Fail.

But first you have to go back.

 

Stiles would joke, “And this is what I did on my summer vacation: Part One, werewolf boot camp. I followed the wolves into the wild today and observed their—ouch!” he jerked away when Derek slapped him upside the head but at least he stopped talking as well.

“Don’t start narrating again,” he grumbled and gave Stiles a pointed look. The kid waved his arms around all, _who me?_ And scrunched up his face. He flashed the hint of fangs and disappeared up a nearby tree.

Stiles frowned up into the canopy for a minute, then smiled and went back to tearing fern leaves apart. It wasn’t long before Scott loped into view, panting a little.

Derek gave it a minute, ears cocked for the telltale rustle and fall of back-up moving closer to their position but there was nothing. The second Scott opened his mouth, he pounced, laid the smaller beta out in the loam and dirt at his friend’s feet with an indignant squawk.

Stiles laughed, stood, and kicked them both stepping over them and heading out of the woods.

“Traitor!” Scott yelled at his retreating back.

“Not my fault you weren’t paying attention!”

“Ugh, get off.”

Derek rumbled low in his throat. He pushed Scott’s face into the dirt for good measure, just to drive home the lesson and hopped up. He followed Stiles out of the woods.

“We see the wolf in his natural habitat,” Stiles murmured, just loud enough for him to catch it. “Stalking the weaker members of its pack. Long-time observers of this behavior have theorized the alpha performs these acts of terror out of love. As a way of expressing—”

“What was that about the weakest member?”

Stiles struggled briefly and went limp.

“I’m going to be pissed if you ruined this shirt.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” He hauls the human to his feet and sniffs him, doesn’t smile or show his teeth. “If I had, it’d be doing you a favor.” And then he takes off for the house, Stiles shouting protestations behind him the whole way, until he’s flushed and breathless, panting on the front steps. Brown eyes bright in the waning light.

 

They spend the summer training: Derek chasing Scott and Jackson, Lydia, Erica and Boyd through the woods. His pack of misfit children. And Stiles nipping on their heels trying to keep up. Even Allison when she’s feeling brave—or foolish— enough to sneak away from her parents’ watchful eyes.

And then in mid-July an anonymous call brings child services down on Coach Lahey’s head and Derek brings Isaac out with him on the next full moon. Erica ruffles the curls on his head and calls him the baby and they chase him into the night woods.

Derek runs with them and tries to show them what it means, what Scott had such a hard time accepting, _pack_ by dint of example. He almost thinks he’s succeeding when Stiles claps him on the back and bobs his head, like some sort of authority on the matter.

Seven weeks of quiet, two full moons, and then of course, that’s when hell breaks loose.

 #

“You know what I don’t get?” Stiles says. “Actually, two things.”

Derek grunts and winds his arms tighter around the shivering teenager. They’re lucky he was wearing his leather jacket, despite Stiles’ mocking, but it’s still piss poor insulation against industrial strength refrigerations.

“No, three things. First of all, since when do you we have a meat packing district?”

“I don’t think this really counts as a district, do you?”

“Second of all, why does everyone and their t—t—twin brother,” his teeth rattle in his scull enough to make Derek’s ache in sympathy, “want Beacon Hills? There’s really nothing here. Except trees. And townspeople. But you c—c-an get those anywhere. Why us? Derek? Is there something magic in our trees?”

“Don’t be stupid.”

Silence.

He can hear Stiles’ heart slowing down as his core temperature drops. It doesn’t matter how close they huddle for warmth, he’s still human, the clock is counting down.

Derek shakes him, huffing warm breath against the back of his neck. “What’s the third?” he demands. And for a second, Stiles doesn’t respond and he feels his heart race, his hands dig into soft flesh through too thin clothes.

“Who thought this would make a good hiding place?” he mumbles and leans his head against Derek’s shoulder, skin cold.

He grimaces, claps a hand against Stiles’ neck and tries to rub a bit of warmth back into him. Feels the curve of a smile.

“The same person who decided to run in without back-up, perhaps?”

“Don’t gloat,” Derek grumbles, “It’s not an attractive look.”

“Pot, kettle?” Stiles shifts a little where he’s seated practically in Derek’s lap, winds his arms around the werewolf’s chest. “This is going to be so awkward in the morning. But like I was saying— you can’t spend all this time trying to talk about teamwork, and I use the word ‘talk’ in the loosest sense of the term, and then _not wait for the team_. Sets a bad example, dude.”

“Don’t call me—”

“Shh, shh, I’m freezing to death here man, let me have it.”

He huffs. “We aren’t going to die in a freezer, Stiles.”

“Yeah. Okay. You’ll wake me up when the cavalry arrives.”

“Don’t even think about it.”

“Hmm?”

Derek shakes him until his teeth rattle again and Stiles yelps, struggling against him.

“Don’t even think about going to sleep, or I swear to god, I’ll—”

“What?”

“Bite you.”

“Promises, promises.”

And that’s when Scott and Boyd pry the door off its hinges.

 #

The thing is, Derek doesn’t have a good answer for why everyone seems to want Beacon Hills; wants his home. For some— like the Climente pack— it’s just that they see the Hale territory as easy pickings. And some of it’s that Gerard Argent, like his daughter, is fucking xenophobic and carries a grudge.

Right now they’re all circling each other, it’s just a matter of whether the situation is going to blow up before or after school starts.


	4. Chapter 4

The snow on the ground melted a little in the wee hours of the morning, just enough to make slush under the tires of the most determined locals. Before the temperature dropped, freezing the roads solid in ridges and mountains of ice. And then the sky opened up and fresh powder covered the ice crust in another foot.

The power did not come back on.

Stiles watched all of this through the windows at the Stilinski house and wondered, for a few hours, if he’d somehow turned into Laura Ingalls when he wasn’t paying attention, stuck in the Big Woods.

“What’s that?” Scott asked.

“Huh?”

“What does that mean, the ‘big woods’? Is it another name for the preserve?”

“No, it’s from a book. We read it in like, the third grade, remember?”

“No. What’s it about?”

“Snow. And being stuck in the woods, and making candy out of maple syrup. And Christmas, I think. Nevermind.” His mother had read the first three or four books to him, even though they were marketed at young girls. She’d loved little Laura Ingalls.

Stiles watched his friend trace initials into the frost on the glass. A-L-L-I and then he looked away.

“Dad said he was going to send a deputy out to try and establish contact. We’ve been totally cut off for almost a week. Even cell reception’s out.”

Scott hummed and drew a heart around Allison’s name. As they sat there, the cold air outside began frosting over the image.

“Any word from Lydia?”

Scott hesitated.

“No. And Deaton’s out of town on vacation.”

“Of course he is.” Stiles rolled his eyes, pulled the afghan around his shoulders tighter. The house didn’t have a wood burning stove and without power, the temperature had dropped well below uncomfortable.

“But we’re meeting again tonight and you should really come,” Scott said. Then he stared; Stiles could feel him staring, like Scott thought he could persuade him with the power of his big eyes alone. Lucky for Stiles, he had ten years experience resisting Scott’s puppy dog eyes.

“What are you going to do? Avoid the pack forever?”

Stiles shrugged.

“That’s stupid.”

“I’m not having this argument again--” he said.

“You are! You’re both being ridiculous. Derek won’t talk about it either.”

“Well, why should he? God, Scott, you don’t get it. We’re not talking about a little misunderstanding here. We were-- we were involved without-- without.”

“So, you are, you’re just going to hide inside until graduation?”

“It’s not hiding. Just forget it. Go to the meeting.” Stiles held up his hand to forestall the rest of Scott’s argument. “I’ll crack the books here, okay? We’ll meet in the middle. If it’s something hinky at all. Could just be a blizzard, you know.” He swallowed heavily and didn’t let his brain think about the rest of it.

Scott huffed but he backed off. He pulled his chemistry textbook out of his backpack and crawled into Stiles’ nest of blankets. Huddled together they started in on their homework. Leave it to Harris to assign three chapters of O Chem in the middle of a potential whiteout.

 

Later Stiles braved a break in the snowfall to run a bag of sandwiches and vegetable sticks out to his dad at the station.

They were at half staff. Enough deputies banging around by candlelight so that they could respond to an emergency if it came in. But with the phones out and Dispatch unreliable they were mostly sitting around flicking through dead air waves and monitoring the CB radio.

“Stiles, what are you doing here?”

Stiles held up the large brown sack in his hands. “Thought I’d bring you dinner.”

His dad ran large hands over his shoulders, squeezing and letting him go. He looked tired, dark shadows in sharp relief under his eyes. The dodgy candlelight added ten years to his face.

“Don’t want to get stuck out here. The roads need to be cleared again.”

“They weren’t that bad.”

“The temperature’s going to drop pretty quick. THank for,” his dad glanced inside the bag, rolled his eyes at the lack of potato chips, “thanks kid.”

Stiles pulled a plastic bag full of tea and hot cocoa packets out and handed it over too, a peace offering.

“Don’t say I never do anything for you.” And his dad grinned, clapped him again, all reassurance and affection.

“Get going. And stay in tonight. I should be back in the morning.”

“Yeah. Oh, wait, any word from the outside yet?” It wasn’t exactly subtle but Stiles was too tired to try for subtle at the moment. TIred and cold and it wasn’t like his dad was ever foor by it anyways. Now he noted the shuttered look in the sheriff’s eyes.

“Too soon to hear back. I’ll see you later.”

No news then, which really was the same thing as bad news at this point. Probably. He wondered if they’d been able to make it out of town at all.

“Well, we can always hook Scott up to my old sled,” he joked and watched the lines in his father’s face deepen. He had a line about harnesses and mushing on the tip of his tongue but the wind was howling through the walls and the candlelight kept flickering. Instead, Stiles darted in for a quick hug and left before he really did get stuck at the station overnight.

Back home, with nothing but the creak of trees outside and the muted ticking from an old clock down the hall for company, Stiles watched his breath mist and thought it might not have been so bad. Having a few other people around to distract him from himself.

He felt itchy and irritable. Hard enough to keep himself busy, and his insomnia at bay, when the power was on. But days of this, no computer, no TV, nothing but the cold and the dark-- he felt like he was a short stretch away from clawing out of his own skin.

Stiles climbed the steps up to his room blind. Inside, the glow from the moon and stars reflected off the snow through his windows enough to walk around without banging a shin on any furniture. But it wasn’t really enough to do much else.

Still, he dug through his closet by touch until he found the book he was looking for and then he sat beneath his window, back to the wall and his childhood quilt pulled up around his ears.

Squinting, he started to brush up on planet cycles and weather phenomenon.

 

He stayed there until his joints ached and he couldn’t feel his fingers, let alone see well enough to make out the words. And then he sat a little longer; staring at the grey smudge moving across the page. Between one very long moment and the next, he fell into a fitful sleep.

 

#

 

Stiles shuddered and arched into the other man’s solid heat. He felt like he was on fire and freezing at the same time. He kept kissing. Mouth slanted hard and wet against soft lips, as his fingers tangled up in dark hair and held on. He was afraid to let go, to move back.

“Is this okay?”

“What?”

Their mouths parted. All the air rushed out of his lungs; he gasped. Flexed his fingers and found them stiff. He wanted to say yes, yes more; he wanted to plunge back in. This was everything.

Stiles stared up into pale hazel eyes, unblinking, shivering, feeling wretched for no reason he could discern. He clutched harder to hold off the dark creeping in around them.

“Is this okay?”

 

The front door banged closed and Stiles woke up, his muscles aching, on his bedroom floor.


	5. Chapter 5

 

 

Stiles a towel over his hair where he’s let it grow out this summer. Says, “Sometimes our lives are such cliches. Anyone else notice that?”

“Noticed something all right,” Erica leers back at him but Stiles just rolls his eyes and chucks the damp towel at her head. She laughs, a counterpoint to the pervasive tension.

“Gotta say, freezing to death in the middle of summer, not on the top of my list for Awesome Ways to Go Out. Jesus.”

“Good thing you didn’t actually die then.” 

Erica dropped the towel onto the floor and before he was aware of moving, Derek had retrieved it and brushed past Stiles. He paused, lights off in the downstairs laundry room, still unfinished walls and a single bare window overlooking the back of the property. Listened to Stiles’ bare feet cross the hardwood floor and the _whump_ when he threw his body onto one of the couches.

With a grimace at himself, he threw the towel into an overflowing hamper. Allison had arrived when he walked back out. She sat perched on the armrest to Lydia’s chair, face tired, and not quite able to look him in the eye.

“I’m so sorry,” she began, “mom and I left early. Back to school shopping. I had no idea they were planning something.” 

He wants to be upset with her. Wants to be angry, or furious. He’s all of these things, a little bit. Tonight had been an unmitigated disaster and he still wasn’t one hundred percent certain how it had happened.

One minute, he and Stiles are walking back to the car with take-out and the next they’ve got more than a dozen hunters breathing down their necks.

Gerard Argent has proven increasingly to be the sort who doesn’t wait to be attacked, he attacks.

They got lucky that Scott checked his voicemail when he did and not an hour later.

“Have they given any indication why they’re coming after us now?” He asks instead.

Allison’s entire face pinches and her knuckles turn white where she’s holding onto Lydia’s sleeve.

“They won’t say anything in front of me. It’s dad, he still thinks— he says he just wants me to have a normal summer.” 

They’ve been lucky so far, the Argent clan hasn’t cottoned onto the fact that Lydia turned with the moon. They still think she’s just a poor, strange girl, who survived Peter’s attack. And it’s the only reason the two girls have been able to maintain contact. Her father’s guilt trying to encourage the smallest bit of normalcy.

“God forbid the villain monologue a little, help us out here or anything,” Stiles complains.

Allison reaches out and touches him, just a second of reassurance.

“You sure you’re alright?”

And he waves her away.

“Seriously, fine. I retain feeling in all of my extremities, I promise.” 

And it’s enough that a soft, collective sigh goes out around the living room, but Derek can still feel the way the younger man shook against him, rattling his bones until his muscles were too tired to keep shivering. It isn’t a pleasant memory. One more to add to the list.

“But,” Allison goes on, “I did hear a couple of the other guys talking, the ones who came to town with Gerard. And I sort of got the impression that you,” her eyes flick in his direction, “weren’t the original target. They seemed sort of… disgruntled?”

“So, maybe they were tracking the Climente’s and now that he’s back in Beacon HIlls, Gerard figures why not pick off two birds with one stone?” Stiles looks thoughtful.

“I don’t know.”

“It’s okay,” Scott says. “We’ll be more careful. But you should probably get back before anyone notices.” Allison agrees with a nod.

“You too,” Derek tells Stiles. “Your dad’s going to be home soon.” It’s true, and enough to shut the kid up, get him moving to collect his things and hustle out the door behind Scott.

 #

Despite what Stiles thinks, _this_ is the first time Derek’s ever actually climbed through his window: two days after their chilly run-in with an industrial size refrigerator. Stiles is right about that though, their lives really couldn’t get anymore cliche.

The sheriff is out of the house but the Stilinski’s have nosey neighbors and he doesn’t want to draw so much attention by ringing the doorbell and making a spectacle on Stiles’ front porch. So instead, two quick jumps, first the tree outside, and then to the roof, has him crawling in through the kid’s open window.

At first, Derek doesn’t see anything, but he can smell him, and hear the soft _thump / thump_ of his heart almost at rest. The laptop is dark on the computer desk but there are pages falling out of the computer tray and scattered across the bedroom floor. That’s when he registers the bare feet sticking up over the side of the bed.

The paper trail ends in a halo of white around Stiles where he’s laid back on the floor, legs propped  up against the bed and head pointing at the door. He’s got his headphones in and his eyes closed, an old book splayed open on his chest.

Derek has no idea what he might be researching now. And he can’t seem to stop staring.

Some weak sixth sense makes Stiles open his eyes, slow and more than a little sleepy. He winces at Derek and slides fully onto the floor, making a mess, leaving creases.

“What do you want?”

His stomach swoops and in that moment, he has a hard time answering. Derek has to physically shake himself, remember why he came all the way across town, scaled the sheriff’s house and climbed through his seventeen-year-old son’s window.

“To talk.”

Stiles’ eyes open wide and his mouth falls open in disbelief. 

“Really? You?” Then he scrambled to hold up his hands, a gesture meant to disarm the argument before it could boil up between them, and sat up. “Forget I said that. Hi Derek, how are you doing tonight? What did you want to talk about?”

He rolled his eyes, and considered his options: the bed, the desk chair or remain standing? All of which would leave him looming over the human. But that wasn’t why he’d come here. To throw around his weight, be the alpha. He’d come because he needed to talk to someone who, while he may needle him over it, wouldn’t do so just to be mean.

Derek sat down on the carpet indian style and refrained from rolling his eyes at the look Stiles gave him over it.

“I think we both know, something’s got to give. With the Argents, and the other pack.”

“It does look like we’re stuck between a rock and a hard place,” Stiles smirked, then sobered.

“Gerard wants us dead, or specifically me—“

“He won’t stop at you.”

“No, he won’t. And Allegra Climente wants Beacon Hills.”

“Which also results from your untimely death. Awkward. I guess we’re just lucky Gerard’s too much of a bastard to pull an enemy-of-my-enemy deal.”

“Lucky.” He couldn’t quite help the bitter laugh. “So how do get them to leave without also taking my head as a trophy?”

“You’re asking me? Remind me to make a note of this in my diary later. The day Derek Hale actually sought my advice on a problem first, before charging head-on onto somebody’s sword.”

He buried a flinch at Stiles’ choice of words and rolled his eyes.

“Mock later, solutions now.”

“We could try to negotiate?”

“With who? The sociopath? Or the violently inclined rival alpha?”

“Right.” Stiles scrubbed a hand over his face, looking frustrated. “What if we just killed them? All of them. That would work.”

“Until your father arrests all of us for murder.”

“Not if we disguise it as a _pack_ of mountain lion attacks?”

“That is possibly the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard you say. And that’s saying something.”

Stiles sneered comically. Derek watched him stretch and twist, slender fingers dragging all the loose print outs into an untidy pile between them.

“Simplest though.”

“It’s not simple.”

Stiles froze but didn’t look at him. Derek wished for a crazy second that he would. That he’d just look up at him. Like that could dispel the weight in his chest, the panic barely kept at bay in the back of his thoughts. The pack’s safety was riding on him and Derek worried sometimes, if only to himself, if that responsibility would be enough to smother him all by itself.

“What?”

“Killing someone,” Derek murmured. Stiles slammed the book he’d been reading closed. They were silent together for several long minutes.

“What if they killed each other?” Stiles bit his lip and continued, “Just hear me out. If we’re stuck between a rock and a hard place, what if we just withdrew. You know, sideways. Let the hunters and the Climente’s run into each other and do our work for us. And, if they kill each other, well, that blood’s not on our hands, is it?”

Derek met Stiles’ eyes and all he saw was a curious sort of calculation. It was kind of beautiful.

“No,” he said slowly, weighing it, “I guess it isn’t.”

Stiles grinned at him, a light in the dusk.

 

That was the first time. And afterwards, Derek just kept climbing through his window.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my apologies, this is two days later than I meant to post this chapter /o\ I bought a new laptop and to pay for it I've had to abstain from starbucks and it's really fucking up my schedule.
> 
> if anyone cares to, you can follow me at tumblr (@ winterrogue), I mostly complain about writing and whatever show I'm currently mainlining.


	6. Chapter 6

It had already become a habit long before Stiles was really aware of it. 

“I’m onto you, you know,” he murmurs into the hot skin under his lips. Feels the werewolf, one hundred and seventy-five pounds of pure alpha male, shudder against him and grins. A large, human hand grabs him by the hair at the back of his head, where it’s thick and grown out. Stiles submits, arches his neck into it.

The air around them is cold but Stiles feels like he’s burning up everywhere their skin touches. It’s got to be the closest you can come to something perfect. This feeling like electricity pinging back and forth between their bodies.

He covers the other man’s mouth, biting softly at his lips until they part and then plunging deeper. Shudders at the heat he finds there, like a furnace, like the fucking sun in his eyes and racing through his veins.

Stiles sinks his fingers hard into skin that won’t bruise. Pulls away just far enough to breathe, an inch or two to suck air into his burning lungs.

“Onto me, huh?”

He grins. He loves this, the quiet antagonism, the way they can still rib each other, even when they’ve got this, this _thing_ burning between them. This connection that runs deeper than it ever did before. Even when they were saving each other’s asses every other week, and bleeding and fighting and screaming at each other.

“Yeah. This,” he says and tilts his head back towards the open window, the blinds run up and askew. There’s snow coming in, piling up in little drifts underfoot, on his bedroom floor.

“It’s becoming a thing, isn’t it?” but he grins and kisses him again.

“I have no idea what you mean.”

One of those hands in his hair cups the back his scull and the curls up over the crown to his forehead. Mockingly checks his temperature, the heat in his skin.

“I think you’re just imagining things, you feel a little flushed.”

But he doesn’t, actually. He feels— Stiles shivers so hard he bites his tongue. He flexes his fingers and they ache where they’re holding on too tight. He is, suddenly, terrified to let go. Afraid to open his eyes. Like one wrong twitch will break the spell.

The spell….

 

Stiles gasps into the slick polyester matress and pulls his arms in under his body, shivering and shaking and feeling horribly exposed. His stomach rolls. His mouth feels dry, lips sealed together. He wants to bury himself in a dark hole and never crawl out of it.

The time on his phone says that he’s been unconscious less than an hour. Does it still count as insomnia if he passes out, but can’t stay asleep?

He clenches his fists and his eyes, and curls up tighter. He just wants his mind to stop.

Stiles stares at the wall until he can’t stand to look at it another minute and then forces his body out of bed. He knows his dad is asleep in the room down the hall; finally, after too many hours coordinating the snow plow and trying to get the emergency phone lines back up and fielding worried parents. So he tries to be quiet as he pulls on clothes, layering shirts and Under Armor under his jeans and a hoody, and bundling up in his only pair of gloves. It’s not really enough against the kind of snow that’s built up the past week. 

He foregoes sneakers for hiking boots— he’s never actually gone hiking and they’re too stiff to be comfortable but at least they’re mostly waterproof— and climbs out onto the roof.

It’s a steep, not quite controlled slide to the edge and he almost misses the drainpipe. Stiles grabs onto it and awkwardly wiggles his body down until he can wrap his legs around one of the porch columns. His fingers scrap down the wood but he makes it to the ground without braking anything which he considers a win.

Stiles crouches in the snow and listens. But there’s nothing, not the sound of his dad waking up from the noise or one of the neighbor’s dogs barking. So he picks his way through the front yard to the jeep and knocks snow off the windshield, just enough that when he gets inside he can see through the driver’s side half.

The engine chokes to life. Stiles gives it a minute to warm up. The interior actually feels colder than it had outside, which just figured.

He drives cautiously. The roads are thick with ice and covered in powder and he feels like he’s driving over train tracks the way the whole cab jounces and shakes. Thats the worst part, because every time the weak Californian sun makes an appearance it starts to melt the street in rivets that freeze solid by two in the afternoon. He has to keep both hands on the wheel to keep the jeep pointed more or less straight.

He makes it just over five miles outside the city center, on the backroad to the Preserve, before he has to stop. Not pull over, because the shoulder is covered up to his doors, just stop there in the middle of the road. They haven’t been plowing this far out and no cars— _let alone any low slung muscle cars_ , his brains is sure to point out— have been passing through either.

Stiles locks up the Jeep and heads out into the trees.

It’s late, but the sky is clear and bright, the light bouncing off the snow and the trees bare and sparsely packed together. He’s got his phone and a small LED light in his pocket and a couple of hours until it starts to get dark and the temperature drops into the danger zone.

There hadn’t been any warning about a blizzard. It had just appeared. Dumping snow and killing the town’s power. And his gut agreed with Lydia, it was suspicious.

And if there was one thing he’d learned since Scott got bit and their lives spiraled wildly out of control, weird always seemed to start out here in the woods. Once or twice might have been a coincidence. But they were in the double digits now for weird shit, and that just screamed _Pattern_.

The snow was spread pristine before him. Beautiful. You couldn’t tell from movies the kind of energy it took though, forging a path through uncut powder. He started sweating into his clothes after half a mile, and soon he couldn’t really feel the cold at all except on the tip of his nose and the exposed planes of his face.

In the distance, from time to time, the silence was broken by the sharp _crack_ and _bang_ when a tree limb gave under the weight of the ice.

He keeps going, deeper and deeper into the woods. He keeps going. He slips in the snow and falls to his knees. His fingers come out of the snow bright red with cold and his knees are wet.

Something makes him stop eventually, a flash of color in the corner of his eye, stark against the otherwise bleak landscape. Red amongst all the black and white. For just a second Stiles could swear his heart stops, thinking _it’s him_ — but it isn’t.

In the bark of a tree four parallel lines glow stoplight red.

Stiles stumbles over for a closer look. And when he leans down he sees that they aren’t really parallel lines at all. They’re just four lines, the two middle ones close together and the outer two farther apart, all going in the same direction. Like claw marks maybe but too small to be from a person or a wolf. And underneath them, a funny little symbol like a broken figure eight, pulsing softly.

There’s something unnerving about the way the light brightens and dies.

Stiles looks around at the other trees and thinks maybe theres just the one bit of weird. But he looks deeper, and his eyes can just barely pick out smudges of red scattered further and further into the preserve. Not like alpha eyes at all.

His stomach clenches, churns and flips over. Stiles puts one foot in front of the other, reaches out to rest his weight against an unmarked tree, leans over and empties his stomach into the snow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> nothing like life stress, the kind where i should probably working on a half dozen other things rather than fic, to inspire another chapter >.>


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is kicking my ass so i release it to the wilds of the internet begrudgingly. 
> 
> i think of the chapters and scenes in this story as two exponential curves approaching the point where they (almost) touch.

 

 

Stiles was saying something about vampires and Derek could see the Netflix window open to Buffy on his laptop. He barely restrained the urge to roll his eyes. Said,

“There’s no such thing as vampires, don’t be stupid.”

“Stupid, says the werewolf,” the kid shot back.

Derek slipped out of his bedroom rather than touch that argument. There was a lot of crazy stuff out there in the world, but he’d never seen a vampire before and therefore wasn’t inclined to believe in them. Stiles would probably say he was tempting fate just putting voice to disbelief.

He stood on the dark, empty street and listened to the soft rise and fall of Stiles grumbling to himself up in his bedroom. Derek smiled a little and walked up the street where he’d parked the camero. Without studying the urge too critically, he headed for the late night coffee shop on the corner of Main St and Kamiak Rd NE.

Inside, the lone barista smiled at him and offered unsolicited advice about their specials. She needn’t have bothered, he’d smelled the too-sweet caramel rich concoctions Stiles favored enough times before. He scanned the headlines from days old newspapers while he waited for the order. Then he drove carefully back to the Stilinski residence. The light was still on upstairs.

It wasn’t easy scaling the side of a house with hot coffee in hand but he was the goddamn alpha. It had to be useful for something.

Stiles looked tired, hunched over his books and frowning. Derek stifled the urge to smooth the lines around his mouth by thrusting the coffee into eager hands. It was uncomfortably pornographic the way Stiles moaned into the cup.

“It’s not a bribe!” he felt a little insulted. After the summer they’d had, if Stiles ever asked him, Derek would have said they were friends. More than friends. Working towards more at least.

“You sure?”

“Pretty sure,” he said. He watched Stiles sip his drink and chatter with a tiny thrill. Derek couldn’t entirely suppress the urge to provide for the members of his pack. But especially for—

He was hardly insensible to Stiles’ loyalty. It was the kind of quality he found impossible to ignore. Even when they’d been at one another’s throats, he’d been reliable. Every time Derek called, Stiles answered. 

Whatever the human thought, Derek couldn’t help but think of Stiles as a rock in the storm that was life in Beacon Hills. It might have been embarrassing, how much he relied on the kid, but even Stiles seemed oblivious to the roll he played for Derek’s peace of mind.

He caught himself staring at the curve of Stiles’ neck while he read. Tried to distract himself by asking about the book itself and just ended up standing too close. He knew he was doing it and he could see the confused back and forth of Stiles’ eyes watching him but he couldn’t seem to convince his feet to move away. His scent was familiar, salt and old paper, and comfortable. 

Derek felt an almost crippling desire to pull the book out of Stiles’ hands, those dexterous hands, and lead him back over to the bed. They could curl up in warm smelling sheets and watch a couple episodes of Buffy  and ignore the doorbell every time a gaggle of costumed kids tripped across the lawn to beg for candy.

But he didn’t move. And in the end, Stiles turned away from him, mouth moving silently as his attention was absorbed with his reading again.

There was no moon tonight. Derek made himself leave again after full dark fell; Stiles never looked up.

He drove home.

The woods around the house were still, shadows looming at him. He was perfectly alone. All of the betas out trick or treating or partying with people their age. Except for Stiles, who couldn’t seem to stop working, even on Hallowe’en.

On a whim, he locked the car, slid the keys into his pocket and loped into the forest.

He didn’t believe in vampires. But this was Beacon Hills, there was always something to go bump in the night. The last thing he needed was Stiles telling him, “I told you so,” if some hapless inhabitant got torn to shreds on the spookiest night of the year.

 #

It was dark by the time he drove home. Dark and freezing and Stiles could barely force his body up the precarious porch supports and through his window. He all but fell into his bedroom, shivering and wet from melting snow. He wasn’t alone.

Stiles froze with his hands clenched in heavy fabric of his hoodie. He blinked and then stared when that didn’t dispel the image of Derek Hale seated on the edge of his bare mattress.

“What—?”

He swallowed convulsively.

Derek’s head shot up at his entrance and he lurched to his feet. They stared at one another, the whites of their eyes glowing in the dim light. Stiles felt his stomach churn, his teeth shivered together in his mouth and he grit them together to keep from chattering.

“What are you doing here?”

“You weren’t at the pack meeting.” Derek sounded like he’d been chewing on nails and screws while he’d been waiting for Stiles to show. It hurt to listen to.

Stiles squared his shoulders and let go of his hoodie. Best to keep as many layers as possible between the two of them.

“No. Scott said there’s no news anyways.”

Derek’s expression darkened. “That’s not the point.” Like every word was being torn out of him. Like Stiles was the one doing the tearing.

“I don’t have anything either. You don’t need to— you don’t have to be here.”

Derek stared at him, the lines of his body tense under his clothes. He looked huge in the shadows, and perfectly still, as though he’d been carved out of stone and planted in Stiles’ bedroom. A reminder of every terrible thing he’d done in the past year.

He had no right to demand Derek leave. But god, how he wanted to do exactly that. It was enough to make him laugh, soft and bitter, his breath a puff of white ghosting out of him. Stiles sagged against the edge of his desk and waited to see what the werewolf would do.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> UPDATE! gah, sorry this took so long, had a few bad uninspired days there. We're getting to the end of this story and I think there might actually need to be a third part-- I'm tentatively thinking that will be my August project :)
> 
> as always *hugs* to everyone reading and thank you for all the lovely comments!
> 
> ** hopefully this is clear but we're combining the past and present in chapters now, the first half takes place immediately following Ch7 and the second half jumps back to a Hallowe'en. Sometimes I wish I could convince my brain to write linearly but it just won't do it =/

 

 

“You don’t— you didn’t need to come out here.”

Derek stared at him but his voice was flat when he said, “No one’s seen or heard from you in days.”

“‘Days’ is a bit of an exaggeration. I saw Scott like the day before—“

“You shouldn’t—“ Derek interrupted him with a low growl. 

And it was still terrible to listen to, but Stiles made himself look in Derek’s general direction and listen even if he couldn’t look him in the eye and hold a rational conversation.

“Until we know what’s going on, even then, you shouldn’t just disappear. What if something happened?”

“Nothing’s happened,” he protested and spread his arms wide in supplication. Indicated the cold, empty room around them and himself, entirely intact.

Derek’s nose twitched and he frowned.

“Are you sure?”

Stiles didn’t want to know what Derek’s werewolf senses were telling him. Cringed at being under the microscope here.

There are a lot of things he regrets; that he feels guilty about. Obviously. But this is the thing that cuts deep, when he least expects it: they only had five weeks together, _five weeks_. And every minute was a lie.

“I’m fine.” He couldn’t look Derek in the eye but he’s fine. Whole and hale to every eye that cares to look; unbleeding. Derek took a step towards him and Stiles was viscerally aware that he’s standing between the werewolf and the window. He tried to edge out of the way without being obvious about it but his legs felt frozen in place.

But Derek didn’t head for the window. He stopped, his hand hovering over the desk, fingers just barely touch the cover of a book bent open on its pages. He stared at it for a long, tense minute. Stiles’ gut clenched while he watched him.

Five weeks and every single minute was a lie. And he had no idea if anything that came before, the friendship, the trust, if any of that had been real either.

Most nights he stayed up late, staring at his ceiling in the dark wishing that his brain would shut off for a few hours. Inevitably, regretting it when he woke drenched in sweat, grasping for what he didn’t have. Never had. Could never have. Fuck.

How could you— where did you even begin to apologize? It was too much.

It hurt to have Derek standing so close and not touch him. And he felt sick, at himself, just thinking about it. About closing the distance between them until he could lean his weight on the older man, tuck his face into the warm skin where his neck met his shoulder and just breath until the sense like asphyxiation went away.

They say it takes thirty days for something to become habit forming, and well, they’d had thirty-five.

“If you won’t come out to— just check in with Scott everyday.”

“Okay,” he mumbled.

Derek nodded. He let through the bedroom door.

The book had been a gift. Old, leather-bound and hand written by young man aspiring to become a wizard. In cramped, fading calligraphy, he claimed to be the apprentice to the most powerful magician in New Amsterdam.

Stiles had read it initially for amusement’s sake. An expensive, and treasured, gag gift. He’d pulled it out the night before around two in the morning in a moment of self-flagellation.

Now Stiles sat down in his computer chair; his fingers considered the edge of the binding, and he put thoughts about Derek to the back of his mind.

The wind rattled the house and howled.

The marks on the trees hadn’t come from any wolf. Too small, too close together and the light said they had to be magic.

He took up the book under his hand, flipped back a dozen pages to a section on magical signatures, the ways a wizard could sign his work, and started reading.

 #

The woods lay quiet and dark but Derek had no problem picking his way silently between the trees. The ambient noise of small woodland creatures, raccoons and possums and rabbits scuttling away from him deeper into the underbrush, gradually faded away. He froze, less than a mile out from the house, and listened but there was nothing but the beating of his own heart.

It was the wrong sound for the forest at night and he felt dread curl in his gut, set all of his senses on edge. Derek strained to catch some whisper, a rustle, anything to put his mind at ease but as he turned, silently, all he found was the faint glimmer of light through the trees. He crept towards it cautiously, without making a sound. Until he stood at the edge of a small clearing that had never been there before.

Vampires were one thing, but Derek knew well enough to believe in faeries.

The forest opened like a tear, rent from the fabric of living things, starlight spilling through the cracks. Laughter sinister as bells, and the tinkling sound of voices rang out until it was all he could here.

No wonder every living thing in the Preserve had fled. He would have been wise to do the same. Instead, Derek stepped into the light. He had to, he was the alpha.

“Welcome, wolf.”

A woman resplendent in silk and fur, lying on a chaise lounge made from a mossy brocade spoke and looked at him, gestured that he approach with her imperious gaze and the flick of her fingers. And with stumbling steps he obeyed, almost against his will. Until he knelt close to her knees, eyes fixed on the pattern of black and white fur spilt around her hips.

A cool touch sent chills down his skin. Her fingers trailed across his sweating brow and into his dark hair, pushed it away off his face.

“What a lovely looking creature that’s found his way to me,” she murmured and her mouth was full of jagged teeth. The faerie, for that is what she was, ran her hand through his hair, combing it and massaging his scalp. 

Without his permission, his eyes began to droop. His head felt too heavy to hold upright and he bent under her ministrations. And as he did, she crooned sickly sweet words into his ear about duty and responsibility and the weight of wanting.

“Poor, sad, lovely wolf. I know just what you need, a good fuck and something warm to lie with in the dark night.”

Derek opened his mouth to deny it but no words would come.

The faerie shushed him, put one slender, bone white finger to his lips and leaned over his prone form.

“Don’t fight. It’s a gift. Trust me, tomorrow you’ll feel so grateful.”

Pain, light and sound, for a second Derek thought he’d been struck by lightening and then he tumbled into darkness.

 

And the next day, he woke in a pile of leaves on the edge of the Hale property with nothing but a foggy memory of running until he couldn’t breathe the night before.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this is so late /o\ -- i was trying SO HARD to get this done before nano started. ugh. i estimate 1-2 chapters left in this part. and i will try to work on them concurrently with my nano novel so that there isn't a hideous wait.
> 
> again, thanks to everyone reading and leaving me comments xoxo

In the story, the wolf-husband always suffers for the vixen’s mischief.

 #

They reached the two week mark without any change. The snow fell, melted, froze, and fell again until Beacon Hills was one big icicle full of frightened people. Stiles couldn’t stand the pinched look on his father’s face; he’s gone through the books and printouts at his disposal twice over, and he’s got no answers.

It’s not good enough. Something’s going to break and Stiles is worried it might be someone he cares about.

Everywhere, people are running out of canned goods as the isolation stretches.

He stopped digging the jeep out of the driveway three days ago. There’s only a little gas left in the tank and Stiles is saving it in case there’s a real emergency.

Scott makes a point of trudging through the snow to his door every afternoon. They melt snow over the camp stove and make it into hot cocoa but they don’t talk much. 

Stiles sat up in the wee hours of the morning. The clouds were too thick to see the sunrise, the only indication the way the grey outside began to glow. He had the journal Derek’d given him in hand again but he wasn’t reading it.

He has no evidence. Nothing to indicate the source of their freak blizzard. All he’s got is the way his gut ties itself into knots. The way he can’t sleep except when he does— to wake gasping and sick to his stomach, trembling and weak.

When it looks more light than dark outside, Stiles pulls on an extra layer and his boots, stuffs the journal in his pocket and heads outside. He uses the front door, there’s no one to notice his leaving

 #

No man is an island. But sometimes he has to be. You don’t always want or need a village to deal with the crap in your own head. That’s what people find so hard to understand. All they want to do is help you, make you better, _now_. 

But the things that hurt, they don’t work like that.

 #

Derek couldn’t pinpoint exactly what propels him out into the woods later that day. Instinct, maybe. The cold doesn’t bother him as much as a human but he’s not an _actual_ wolf, so he pulls on a jacket before he leaves the house.

The others haven’t noticed yet, or at least he doesn’t think they’ve noticed, the way the wildlife has moved into retreat. First the birds, but the smaller mammals have begun to follow suit. So that the woods are unnaturally still the deeper he goes.

And there are lights in the trees, blood red and pulsing like a heart beating. He’s leery of getting too close, having had more than enough of magic so far this year.

Instead he follows the lights for a mile or two until something catches his attention, the sour smell of sorrow and bitter chocolate.

Stiles is a flash of deeper red at the base of a tree, his jeans dark with melted snow where he’s kneeling in it.

The sight catches him by surprise and Derek freezes. Just stares at the human’s bent head, his sloped, almost defeated shoulders. It hurts to look at him and Derek is afraid at looking too closely why that is.

He lets the snow break under his boots as he closes the distance between them. So that Stiles will look up, will _look at him_. His face is pale except where the cold wind has burned the apples of his cheeks, the impish turn of his nose. His eyes are dark and hallow when they meet Derek’s.

“What the hell are you doing?” and his voice is rougher than he means for it to sound. But Derek doesn’t know how to talk to Stiles anymore. Because most days Stiles can’t stand to look at him let alone talk to him anymore and that hurts too. He’ll turn to mock something Scott or one of the others did, to ask if he needs coffee, to say _I’m tired, let’s go to sleep_ and it’s like an open wound when he realizes there’s no one there.

Stiles opens his mouth wide, and his lips are blue jesus christ, but no sound comes out. He just shakes his head and shivers and his hands are are bloodied and torn up as well. His mittens discarded in the snow.

“Stiles?”

And it’s enough to snap Stiles out of whatever it is. He gulps and says too loud,

“There are bodies.”

“What?”

“Bodies,” he gestures around them, “frozen to death. I found one of the deputies my dad sent.” His eyes are bloodshot and Derek watches his whole face crumple, while he gasps for air.

Before Derek can talk himself out of it he drops down in the snow next to the boy and folds his hands over Stiles’ shoulders, tries to rub some heat into him.

“So?”

Stiles laughs bitterly. His body keeps tensing and releasing, like he can’t decide whether to lean into Derek or tear himself away.

“So— don’t you see?” he grabs onto Derek’s shirt and gestures at the base of the tree, underneath the four lines glowing red. “See?”

“No.”

Until Stiles reaches out and traces the funny little red squiggle with a slender finger.

_SS_

And then he drags his whole hands across the slashes.

“Like a fox,” he says inanely. 

“What—?”

“It’s me. I’m the one doing this. Obviously.”

Derek felt the bottom drop out of his stomach.

“No,” he said, “that doesn’t make any sense.” And he dug his fingers into Stiles’ shoulders, shook him. This time the younger man flinched away and refused to meet his eyes.

“My subconscious.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. You—or your subconscious wouldn’t— that’s _stupid_ , Stiles.” He tries to catch his eye, burns a hole in the side of his head until Stiles finally looks at him.

Wide brown eyes blink up at him as snow drifts out of the sky. White flakes catch in ridiculous eyelashes and melt against pale white skin. He shakes him against just for good measure. He doesn’t know how to make Stiles believe him, but he doesn’t believe for a minute that this, any of this, could be his fault. And just when he’s about to try and talk sense into him with _words_ for fuck sakes, Stiles opens his mouth and blurts out—

“I’m sorry! I don’’t— I’m just so fucking sorry.” And pulls out of Derek’s grip on his body.


	10. Chapter 10

Stiles pulls away from Derek and he almost lets go, for a second his fingers go slack where the kid’s clothes are frozen stiff, but it’s like a gunshot splitting the air and the next moment Derek scrambles over both of them to keep his hold. To hold onto him, so that one of them is. Stiles trips over his feet, limbs stiff and even more uncoordinated than usual.

Staring at his blue tinged skin, Derek’s afraid all over again how long he’s been out there.

He gives in and shakes Stiles, fisting his jacket until it _crunches_ between his bare fingers and just fucking shakes him until Stiles’ head wobbles on his neck and he makes a wounded sound, different from before.

Derek’s said this so many times he feels like a broken record but his heart his hammering in his chest and his lungs feel tight for all the fact he’s a god damn werewolf and he rarely feels short of breath.

“Don’t. Be. Stupid,” he growls.

Stiles won’t look at him and it makes him want to howl.

“Listen to me! You are not doing this. Not possible.”

“How do you know?” Stiles barks and scrabbles at his hands. His eyes are bloodshot, with dark circles underneath—all clear signs that he hasn’t been sleeping, as if Derek needed more clues. As though the crazed pale light in his eyes wasn’t enough to give it away or the way his hands shake with ultra-fine tremors but not from cold.

“How do I know?” Derek feels like the incredulity will choke him. “How do _you_ know?” 

Stiles jerks one arm free and holds up his slender hand, crooks the fingers like he’s got claws but all Derek can see is bloody rags of skin and broken—human—nails. He reaches up and captures the hand, tucks it inside his jack, up high against his ribs where his body heat gathers under his arm. Stiles jolts like he’s been electrocuted.

Good—that means he hasn’t lost all feeling in the damn appendage. 

“I don’t know what you think that means, but I don’t see it.”

“It’s a signature. SS.” Stiles’ fingers flex against his lats. 

“That’s not your name.” Derek is willing to admit he’s being stubborn here for stubborn’s sake but it feels like a valid point. And besides that, he—

“There’s no reason why you’d do any of this. None. I know you.”

He watches the muscles in Stiles’ face collapse, the desperation runs off like water and his mouth sags a little. And maybe if it weren’t for the dark circles and the faint lines that have made inroad around his mouth—and fuck, when did he start getting lines around his eyes—he might have looked almost childlike. 

“But you don’t,” Stiles murmurs, so low even werewolf ears have a hard time hearing it. “You don’t know me.”

Derek watches the way his eyes lose focus, pupils too narrow in the snow bright afternoon, and feels absolutely terrified.

 #

Stiles put himself between Derek and the Faerie Queen, who snapped her fingers once, under that duress. And between one moment and the next breath, everything changed.

And nothing changed.

Except that Stiles dropped his head and jerked away from him before Derek could speak. 

His head felt overfull with memories that didn’t feel quite real. Tastes left lingered on the tip of his tongue and touches still warm on his skin that he couldn’t describe.

He’d had these dreams before, hadn’t he? As dreams?

You can’t describe it like a fog lifting, not when a fog is the kind of thing that rolls in. There was no rolling. More like the anesthesia they give you that doesn’t completely knock you out. One minute you lie down on the exam table, naked and cold, and the next you’re sitting in your friend’s car and they’re telling you how you spent the entire operation talking the nurse’s ear off.

It’s more of a coming back to yourself. When someone points out the woman’s nose and the entire picture resolves, and you realize you’ve been looking at the same picture this whole time, but from someone else’s perspective.

But when Derek blinks again Stiles is slamming the door to the Jeep and driving away. He’s left confused and blinking in a field that feels empty even when he’s surrounded by werewolves—a bunch of kids he picked up and bit, and the sound of the one he—of the—of Stiles driving away.

It would be the kindest thing to say, _No one can make you feel something you don’t already feel_. But that’s a lie.

He wishes he could make his feet move, chase Stiles down and stop him from getting too far away. Derek feels rooted in place. He can’t even begin to grasp what must be going through Stiles’ head when he can’t get a grip on his own.

Because it’s hard to remember how you felt in a dream, especially when it’s so similar to one you’ve had before.

 #

And then he feels kind of furious and he grabs Stiles’ other hand and squeezes until he’s afraid he might break something.

“That’s bullshit,” he whispers, furious.

Stiles blinks.

“Don’t give me—just, _bullshit_ I don’t know you. We’re friends, aren’t we? I mean, before,” Derek waves his hand like he was brushing everything between them aside and Stiles hand goes with him, still trapped. “Faeries and l—love spells, or whatever the hell she did to us—“

“To you.”

“I like you,” Derek blurts out and doesn’t let Stiles pull away. “I did. Before—just, before. And no, I wasn’t going to do anything about it, not then and not anytime soon but I might have, later.” He is too afraid to try and make Stiles meet his eyes and fail, so he stares at their hands. “That’s not true, I definitely would have, later.”

Stiles’ fingers twitch against his but he doesn’t say anything.

“We were friends, and I liked you, and you know what I hate the most? I would have _chosen_ to make a move, eventually, and she took that moment away. And now you won’t look at me, and you look like you’re trying to kill yourself through exhaustion, and I don’t if we’ll ever get back there again.”

He listens to the human’s throat click, too dry to swallow. Then Stiles opens his mouth and says, 

“But the spell.”

“Is five weeks I’ll never get back. But that’s all. And we’ve been friends longer than that. Haven’t we?” 

Derek almost could have shriveled up with shame at the desperation creeping into his words. He still makes himself look up, just enough to watch Stiles’ chin bob, acquiescence.  

“So, don’t tell me I don’t know you, at least a little bit.”

 #

The feeling is starting to come back to Stiles’ hands where Derek’s skin touches his. 

It burns. 

It hurts.

He wants to believe what Derek is saying but he’s done that before and look where it got them.

But he’s tired, desperately so; it’s tempting to close his eyes right there. Instead, he lets the werewolf lead him out of the woods without much more protest. Derek takes him home, one arm wrapped around his shoulders, supporting him. 

There’s snow on the floor where he left his window open.

Stiles strips out of his soaked clothes while Derek finds clean sheets and makes the bed, piles it high with blankets and pillows. He climbs in, eyes heavy.

He’s afraid to believe this, any of it, which may begin with Derek but ends with red marks in the woods.

“I would have liked that too,” he mumbles between chattering teeth.

“What?” Derek raises his head from where he’s unknotting his boots, surrounded by melting snow.

“That moment. Eventually.”

“We’ll figure this out.”

And he doesn’t know if Derek means this—this between them or the way the whole town is dying and it’s probably his fault. But for the first time since it started snowing, he looks up and meets Derek’s eyes.

“Okay.”

And hopes that he can believe him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just skulking by with this--written in one rushed hour at like 5 AM so all mistakes are my own (including the tense--the tense in this this is really fucked up and needs to be edited but I have way too much on my plate to deal with it atm). 
> 
> Like I mentioned about a bajillion months ago, there will be a third story in this series. I do not know when I'll have the chance to write it but it WILL get written. I'm sorry if this isn't the ending everyone reading was looking for but I think it's a little more hopeful than the last one at least?
> 
> follow me on tumblr @[winterrogue](http://winterrogue.tumblr.com%22) for fannish musings or on twitter @liacooperwrites for original fiction updates and general writing stuff.

**Author's Note:**

> Please be aware that this story deals with the aftermath of dub/non-con. In the first part of this series, Derek was involved with Stiles in a sexual relationship while effected by a faerie's love spell.


End file.
